Night Terrors: Savage Species, Book 1 (12 page)

Something hooked Jesse’s ankle and sent him sprawling headfirst into the blanket of dead pine needles. He flopped onto his back, realizing he’d simply tripped over a root, and watched the monster leap onto a branch directly above him. For a moment, it sat perched over him, its snarling face lusting for his blood. Jesse screamed. The thing plummeted down at him. He rolled over to evade it. The white salamander body thumped down where he’d just been. Jesse clambered forward and discovered how close to the open air he was. Something slapped the heel of his sneaker, the creature groping for him. Jesse shot out a hand, bellowed for help. His elbow broke through, his head.

The creature caught him and hauled him backward.

Jesse stared up as its leering face loomed closer.

Don’t kill me!
he wanted to scream, but the sight of the mad, iridescent eyes stole his voice. The teeth, he noted with clinical fascination, were inward curving, like those of some species of sharks. That way, he remembered from watching
Shark Week
, the predators would be able to hook their prey, batten onto them so that even if their victims were able to disengage their bleeding bodies, the damage would be so great they’d be easy to finish off.

The hooked, scythe-like teeth drew closer. Jesse felt a droplet of rain on his hand, realizing with sick irony that he’d almost made it outside the sepulchral darkness of the pine tree, that part of him
had
made it outside the shadows. If only he could’ve gotten to the daylight…if only he could’ve—

You’d have died anyway, and you know it. Just pray it doesn’t rape you the way it did Tiara Girl.

Jesse whimpered, his chest heaving, as the creature reached for him. He realized with amazement that it was clutching a branch with its bottom feet and dangling bat-like over him.

The taloned hands reached the mat of pine needles next to his shoulders, and the sighing jaws swam nearer. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.

Something clutched Jesse’s wrist. Then he was yanked out from under the creature, his head smacked by fluffy pine branches.

He opened his eyes and stared up at his savior.

Colleen.

“
Look out!
” she screamed.

The creature emerged from the pine tree, its eyes slitted with rage. Colleen backpedaled, and Jesse, still on his ass, dug with his heels and palms to scuttle away. He bumped something, gasped and turned to see a pale figure towering over him. He was sure for a moment it was one of the beasts, but then he saw the toga, the beefy arms.

Goliath.

The gigantic man wielded a wooden baseball bat—Goliath was apparently a purist of the game—and was fending off a snarling beast.

Colleen bumped into Goliath’s broad back; he shot a glance back at her and saw the creature who’d nearly killed Jesse approaching.

“Smash it,” Colleen said.

Goliath gave her an exasperated look and raised the bat. The creature closest to the huge man was snarling and snapping at him. The creature closest to Jesse was still watching the trio of potential victims with a confident, calculating look that was somehow worse than the other creature’s feral one.

Goliath swung, and the snarling creature ducked with a quickness Jesse wouldn’t have thought possible. Then, cobra-like, it darted forward and hopped back, and Goliath was holding his chest in dismay. Jesse caught a brief glimpse before Goliath’s enormous paw covered it up, and he was able to see the ragged clump the creature had chomped out, half of Goliath’s pectoral muscle gone, the nipple replaced by a flowing scarlet bed of hamburger.

Goliath raised the bat, but the pain in his chest arrested the motion midway.

The creature didn’t hesitate.

Leaping forward, it fastened its feet in Goliath’s sheet-covered hips and with its fingernails began shredding the sides of the huge man’s face. The ears were gone in an instant, the temples flayed. Goliath’s high-pitched screaming was terrible, and almost as bad was the drizzle of blood that sprayed over Jesse and Colleen.

The mixed odors of raw meat and feces made Jesse ill. He felt himself mentally retreat, his body suddenly a nerveless husk. His knees buckled.

The creature from the pines crouched over him.

Chapter Eleven

Jesse kicked it in the face. Its head barely moved, but its slitted eyes darkened in outrage.

It lunged for Jesse’s face. He whipped his head to the side, felt the whoosh of the creature’s mouth as it missed him by inches. He flung his arms up to ward it off, then they were both crushed by flailing bodies.

In the melee he took an elbow from Colleen, who’d been knocked down by Goliath and the creature feasting on him. The huge man was a goner, but somehow he was still struggling for life. Something limp smacked Jesse’s face and he realized with revulsion that it was the beast’s pendulous breasts, apparently the first female creature he’d encountered. As he scrabbled away from the mass of twisting bodies, he discovered it also had more hair. The filthy black strings pendulummed as the female beast shredded Goliath’s chin. He was swatting the creature in the head, but it seemed unaffected by the club-like blows.

Jesse pushed to his feet, took a few jogging steps before glancing back and seeing Colleen fighting for her life in the pile. Goliath and the female creature had somehow interposed themselves between Colleen and the creature who’d attacked Jesse, but the cadaverous monster was extricating itself, would be free in moments. Colleen, however, was hopelessly pinned under Goliath’s hemorrhaging body.

Go back! She saved your life, asshole!

Jesse moaned, knowing the voice was right. Acid boiling in his throat, he drew closer, bent and grasped the bat. Its handle was slick with sweat, the barrel speckled with black ichor, but it nevertheless felt good in his hands. The rapist creature burst loose from the pile, pounced on Colleen. Before she could get her hands up, the creature pinioned her wrists to the ground and slid its long wormy tongue up her throat. Jesse saw tears squeezing from the sides of Colleen’s eyes, and without further hesitation he brought down the bat like he was splitting a cord of wood. The barrel thunked solidly against the back of the creature’s skull.

It slumped on top of Colleen, but Jesse could see immediately it hadn’t lost consciousness. Far from it, the creature was cupping its dripping pate with one taloned hand and pounding its other fist in anger on the playground mulch.

“Again,” Colleen croaked.

Jesse gave her a baffled look, and she pushed up on the writhing creature as hard as she could. Teeth bared from the strain, she growled, “Hit the bastard again!”

Jesse did. This time he crushed the side of its face. The creature yowled in agony, and Jesse brought the bat down again, the Louisville Slugger cracking the forearm covering its face.

He swung again, thinking,
Not so tough now, you gutless rapist
, but Colleen seized his arm, yanked him backward. Stumbling after her, Jesse saw why Colleen had dragged him away.

The female creature had paused, Goliath’s now limp body messy with gore, and was watching its fallen comrade intently.

“Run!” Colleen yelled.

Jesse followed. He couldn’t believe how fast Colleen ran. They shot by the seesaw, headed for the concrete sidewalk that led out of the playground. Jesse glanced to his left and was immediately sorry he had.

Three of the creatures had swarmed over the jungle gym, reminding Jesse very much of lizards sunning themselves on a rock. Yet it wasn’t even noon, and the sky had grown dark. A couple more droplets of rain pattered on his arms, and the western thunder rumbled. Bad Company had ceased its ballad, and in its place Jesse heard the first few notes of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”.

The kids trapped inside the jungle gym didn’t seem to notice the song change.

There was a short, red-haired boy and three girls in bikinis, one of whom Jesse now remembered as Light Blue Bikini Girl. Under any other circumstances, he was certain the red-haired boy would’ve thanked his stars to be trapped with three gorgeous girls in skimpy swimwear, but this wasn’t being snowed in at a cozy mountain cabin or being marooned on a tropical island.

This was being trapped in a cage by monsters.

The creatures, Jesse realized with sick understanding, were taunting their prey. One creature would curl his freakish tongue out at Light Blue Bikini with lascivious menace and actually chortle whenever she’d recoil. Another creature—this one was shorter and broader than the others, its skin a dingier shade of white—was dangling its arms through the gaps in the jungle gym, making halfhearted grabs at the girls as they evaded it.

Before they made it past the jungle gym, Jesse witnessed one more atrocity.

One of the creatures had sneaked behind Light Blue Bikini. Quicker than Jesse could believe, it snagged her by the calf and dragged her screaming through a gap in the bottom bars. She clawed the mulch to return to the safety of the barred dome; her braying screams were the loudest Jesse had yet heard.

Her shrieks must’ve agitated the creature because it gave her body a rough shake. Her blond hair jostled as her head smacked the ground, but she only screamed louder. Lips drawn back in a snarl, the creature grasped her by the ankles, pivoted, and swung her entire body through the air in a whipping arc. Her face and shoulders smashed the ground, the sound of her snapping neck cutting off her screams.

The last thing Jesse saw as he tore his eyes away were the two other creatures dropping inside the jungle gym and setting upon the other victims in a flurry of claws and teeth.

They neared the sidewalk, the shrill screams of Angus Young only partially masking the death wails erupting all around them. The number of creatures seemed to have grown. A frenzied scan of the playground revealed at least a dozen of the beasts, every last one smacking and chewing on the body of a victim. Jesse was also sure the number of college students had diminished, and not just because they’d been eaten. There appeared to be about half the number of people there’d been only minutes earlier, and very few of those present were still alive.

Still, somewhere in his muddled thoughts, he understood there might be hope for them. If so many had escaped from the playground, he and Colleen might too. The creatures were too concerned with devouring their victims to worry about the ones who were getting away.

He was thinking this when a creature stepped onto the sidewalk in front of them.

Ten feet tall at least, the creature was also more muscular than the others, its green eyes larger.
A fine specimen
, some voice within Jesse’s mind commented, a remnant perhaps of all the crappy sci-fi movies he watched at three in the morning.

It extended its arms as if barring their way. Or perhaps it was about to embrace them both. A surge of panic so bright it nearly blotted out all other thought flooded through him, but an object resting against Jesse’s leg seemed to nudge him back to reality.

The bat.

Jesse raised it, called out, “Get down!” to Colleen. The creature’s hungry grin widened in amusement, and Jesse realized how feeble his weapon was. The creature leaned closer as if offering its face up for batting practice, but before Jesse could swing, a noise erupted to their right.

The creature turned, and at the last moment Jesse realized what the sound had been.

A blatting horn.

The black pickup truck steamrolled through the high weeds and smashed into the creature, which flipped sideways onto the windshield before tumbling over the roof and flopping into the bed. The truck skidded sideways just as it reached the pines, and for a moment Jesse was sure it would tip. But the wheels jounced down, the creature in the back bouncing up and landing limply, dead or unconscious.

He and Colleen shared an amazed look.

Then the door opened and they discovered who’d saved them.

Musclehead.

Jesse had forgotten all about the night before, when he and Emma—

Jesus Christ
, he thought.
Emma!

He’d completely forgotten about her, and on the heels of that thought he remembered Greeley, the two of them disappearing at the same time.

Maybe they got away
, he thought and was immediately ashamed to find he only wanted one of the two safe.

Musclehead gestured toward the open door. “Get the hell in!”

Colleen grabbed Jesse’s wrist and dashed with him to the black truck. Colleen lunged inside first, and Jesse followed. As he did he caught a glimpse of something black at Musclehead’s side.

A handgun.

Jesse knew nothing of firearms, but the gun in Musclehead’s hand filled him with a sudden flash of hope. So did the dark crew cut, the square jaw, and the bodybuilder’s muscles. The guy looked more like a Marine than ever as he slammed shut the door and jerked the truck into reverse. They halted, Musclehead’s strong hand reaching up to shift the truck into drive, and an alabaster shape plummeted down from the pines and crashed down on the hood.

Snarling, the creature drew back a fist and punched through the windshield like paper, its talons whickering through the air an inch from Jesse’s face. As calmly as if he were a cop positioning a radar detector, Musclehead leaned out the window, the black gun gripped in his left hand, and squeezed off four deafening shots. The first missed, but the next two made the creature twist sideways, a spray of black blood misting the webbed windshield. The fourth shot knocked the creature off the hood. As if he did this sort of thing every day, Musclehead drove over the creature with a dull crunch, and in a moment they emerged from the sidewalk and into the parking lot outside the playground.